Outrageous: Paedophile was given new UK passport whilst on-the-run

It is believed to have been issued to Richard Fruin, 36, by the ­British High Commission in ­Malaysia.

He was later captured and sent home where he was jailed.

But he was allowed to keep the passport after his release and fled to Cambodia where he took a teaching job and abused three more children.

Last Monday in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh he was jailed for two years for the offences.

He will be deported to Britain on his release.

Fruin was arrested in Cambodia last October when police raided a guest house in Phnom Penh and found him in a room with a half-dressed eight-year-old boy. He had earlier abused the boy’s brothers, aged ten and 11.

“If police had not taken action I don’t know what he would have done,” the boys’ mother said at the time of Fruin’s capture.

During the raid police seized the passport Fruin used to escape to Cambodia. He had obtained it in March 2012 while in Malaysia after more than six years on the run.

“Richard Fruin given new UK passport”

He had skipped bail in 2005 after police found 300 films and photographs, including depraved images of children, at his home in Stroud, Gloucestershire.

Fruin ended up in Malaysia where High Commission officials would have been able to check a database to see if he was a wanted man. The Home Office has refused to confirm if Fruin was flagged up.

All UK passports applications are now processed in Britain.

Fruin was deported from Malaysia in May 2012 and later jailed for a year for having indecent images.

He was allowed to keep his passport after his release and used it to head to Cambodia despite being on the Sex Offenders Register which ­required him to tell police of his travel plans.

Last night, the Government was facing questions as to why Fruin was handed a British passport while he was a fugitive, then allowed to use it to flee abroad again.

A spokesman for Her Majesty’s Passport Office said: “We rely on law enforcement ­agencies to advise us of any ­information that would prevent an individual being entitled to a ­passport.”